This week, the assignments were just to get going on our genres. I really dreaded doing them, and put them off as long as humanly possible while still meeting the deadline. Way too much work this semester! Also,we needed to get going on our email lists and do peer reviews of each other’s work (although I have yet to do that….that will be Sunday night as I’m going out of town AGAIN!). I set out to get my stuff done early so that this weekend I could be gone and not have to do any homework while in Lexington. I only aimed to get done what was due for this class before I left because I was too busy getting assignments done for other classes. Okay, enough of that….

This week, since there weren’t too many assignments, there weren’t a whole lot of new processes I used. I would say, though, that it took a lot of concentration do write the journal entries and my poem. I had to get in the mind of the person and imagine a life that was totally different from mine. It was hard, because I didn’t want to make it sound like I thought deaf people had pitiful lives or that they were unintelligent, yet I wanted to make a point that it is difficult to adapt to an environment where, in the beginning, you’re already “behind.” Also, the process of searching online for more resources has become a little easier. I think I am getting better at knowing what to look for, where to find it, and how to cite it.

This week, I know that I learned how to be a better manager of my time. We had fewer assignments this week, but because I knew I was going to be gone this weekend, I made an effort to get as ahead as I could before getting behind. Procrastinating is like a black hole that chases you. Once you get “in” it, you can’t get out. I also think that, this week. Also, I didn’t think that I would be able to swing the first genre of the poem. I thought that it would be really corny and that it would sound fake, but in the end, I think it turned out pretty well. The journal entries were kind of an offshoot of that…..once I got in the mood or voice of the poem, it was easy to keep rolling and elaborate more about the things that were mentioned in the poem.

Inquiry and Literacy
How can finishing a research project, using literacy and inquiry, increase your overall confidence as a student?

This one is easy for me. I’ve already talked a lot about how so many times I thought it would be so hard to do things I’ve already done this semester (figure out Power Point—almost there—make a webliographpy and so on). When you get right down to it, this class essentially sets you up with a question, points you in the direction of a vast field of information and says, “go get it!” And in the end, you will somehow end up (hopefully) with a nice little package of information that gives you an answer to the question you started with. To me, it seems unbelievable that we just craft questions in our minds….the little “I wonders” that often float through our heads, and we then act on it and our efforts do not go unmet. Somewhere out there, there are answers to most of the things we wonder about. To know that, after using those literacy skills in this course, that I could answer just about any musing I have simply by employing the right search strategies is amazing. That does give me a lot of confidence as a student. There are many things you think, “Oh, well….I may *never* know the answer to that question,” but when you set out to find the answer and you DO….that is really cool